Essays

We like to think of our generation in this Information Age as the smartest and most knowledgeable that has ever lived. Yet most people in modern Western culture have no idea what our universe looks like or how to begin to think about the way we humans may fit into the cosmos. Every traditional culture known to anthropology has had a cosmology—a story of how the world began and continues, how humans came to exist, and what the gods expect of us. Cosmology made sense of the ordinary world by defining a larger context and grounding people's sense of reality, their identity, and their codes of behavior in that grand scheme. Like modern science, it embedded everydayness in an invisible reality: Modern science explains by means of countless molecules; African cosmologies explain by means of countless spirits. Ordinary people in traditional societies accepted responsibility for maintaining the cosmos itself by ritually reenacting the creation stories for every generation. This is how they knew who they were. The absence of a cosmology was as inconceivable as the absence of language. Their pictures of the universe were not what anyone today would consider scientifically accurate, but they were true by the standards of their culture.

Science undermined all traditional pictures of the universe in the Renaissance, centuries before it was in a position to create one of its own. A cosmology can only be taken seriously if it is believable, and after the scientific revolution our standards of believability were forever changed. For four centuries, scientific cosmology was not taken seriously because the ratio of theory to data was almost infinite. However, science now appears to be closing in on an origin story that may actually be true—one that can withstand the most rigorous tests and will still be accepted hundreds of years from now, as Newton's theory remains valid for the solar system (within known limitations). This is the highest grade of truth possible in modern science.

Modern cosmology is in the midst of a scientific revolution. New instruments are producing the first detailed data about the distant universe. Since light travels at a finite speed, looking out in space is, the same as looking back in time. We can now observe every bright galaxy in the visible universe, and even look back to the cosmic dark ages before galaxies had formed. In the patterns of the subtle temperature differences in the cosmic background radiation in different directions we are learning to read the Genesis story of the expanding universe.

The resulting origin story will be the first ever based on scientific evidence and created by a collaboration of people from different religions and races all around the world, all of whose contributions are subjected to the same standards of verifiability. The new picture of reality excludes no one and treats all humans as equal. The revolution in scientific cosmology today may open the door to a believable picture of the larger reality in which our world, our lives, and all our cultures are embedded.